Careers I wish I’d known about when I was 16. (My Dad once told me he’d wanted to be a vicar when he was a kid, as he thought they only worked on Sundays).
Politician. I didn’t really know this was a career when I was younger, just thought of it as a calling for people who wanted to do good and make the world a better place. What an idiot! Politics would have been great – short hours, great expenses, wonderful pension plus all the executive directorships, newspaper columns and freebies you could have fitted in.
Professional Quizzer. We didn’t have such things in those days, but it would have been great. Being paid to know a wide range of trivia, appearing on TV and in Celebrity Specials and working for a question setting company, there can be few jobs that I’d enjoy more. Winning Who Wants to be a Millionaire would be good too. I believe at least one winner was a professional quizzer and another winner went on to be a professional quizzer.
Academic numismatist. I don’t know what the real job title is, but we’ve had them give talks at the coin society. They seem to do things like examine hoards, research the decline of the Roman Empire by reference to the quality of the coinage, and research the patterns of dropped coins in East Anglia. I could do that.
I could see myself doing all those things, and enjoying them. It’s just a shame that our careers service at school was a questionnaire (I was suited to outdoor work, it said), a box of dog-eared leaflets and a disenchanted metalwork teacher with no interest in the job. Let’s face it, if you don’t make the grade as a metalwork teacher, you aren’t going to be much good at anything.
Painted Lady
Photos are of Painted Lady butterflies – there was one in the garden this morning when I left. It settled, I took my camera out of the bag . . .
The batteries ran out as I tried to focus.
What a fabulous first line! There are a bunch of those careers I wish I had known about when I was 16 too! Truly, what it comes down to is possibility. Not expectation, which much of us grew up with.
If I am ever lucky enough to have grandchildren, I will make it a point to lessen my expectations of them and to encourage their possibilities. “What is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” Mary Oliver
I confess to being a hands-off parent when it comes to such things, and encouraged them to do what they wanted to do, rather than trying to force them to do what I thought they should do. One, having originally done Sports Science did his Masters in Marketing and now works in internet stuff I don’t really understand. The other went to Canada, worked in hospitality, retail (pet shop),, IT, sales and now customer service for a bank. The list of dead end jobs is endless but he is happy and making a life. 🙂
That is a great quote!
My careers advice consisted of my dad telling me what to do. That lasted three years.
I had a similar. He was good at many things, but careers advice wasn’t one of them. 😉
Children are sent down various career chutes with abandon by educators of all skill levels, some of whom should never have been in education themselves, but probably ended up there the same way. Sometimes it takes a while to figure out where one should be in life. The important things are to develop and maintain a sense of curiosity, learn how to learn things on one’s own, and most of all, develop and maintain a life-long sense of self respect. I remember a quote from Tolkien’s LOTR. “All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost.”
I do have one of those qualities – curiosity. It has concerned me post-Covid that I have had difficulty concentrating enough to read.
How can I become a professional quizzer
Try this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Ashman
I’m on it
I’m sure you’re up to the challenge! 🙂
👍👍
Careers service at school? What?
This was the 1970s, we had moved on from the Dickensian system you endured, though not by much. 🙂
It is interesting that we have painted ladies here in Australia. I guess they came out with the convicts
I looked that up on Wikipedia, which tells me that it was already there and is very closely related but not identical to our Painted Lady. Quite an interesting read.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_painted_lady